Hurro friends. We’re about to release an update with several new features, including emoji integration. I’d appreciate the community’s steer on the interface.
From a writing perspective, which interface do you prefer?
A = possible future state 1
B = possible future state 2
Neither option is locked in and it might turn out to be a mixture of both. I just need some direction.
Hmmm maybe B is a good mix of both A & B. It’d give writers more space for writing and be easy for me to implement.
I prefer B because it looks like a sheet of paper and more conducive for writing. I also like how the title of the passage shares the “sheet” with the prose below. However, I used to do my school reports with a typewriter so maybe I’m just not “hip” and “with it”, like the young kids are. 
Design A looks like just a regular modal window to a database field. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I’m just being honest.
Edit: Also, design B looks less busy in the writing area. Cluttered interface design can distract from the content being created. The less distracting an interface is, the better; especially for creative work.
I’m adding a D option which might swing a few votes? What do you think @Hidnook can you add that to the vote 
D is less cluttered than C but has the affordances of B?
It’s not every day you wake up excited to share your dreams with your peeps on an online forum 
But when you do this is what happens…
It’s a rough idea, but I have a feeling it’s possible. Importantly, the preview on the right could be more like an integrated “workspace” preview instead of what it is now, which gives the impression that StoryMate stories have to be long vertical stories. They don’t.
Love this! And I like it much, much more than the other mock-ups.
I also don’t understand how B, C, or D could possibly be considered less cluttered than A! The editing window is literally overlapping and obscuring the menu bar of the parent application in B, C and D. What program has done that, ever? OS X doesn’t do that with its menu bar, Windows doesn’t do that with its taskbar, programs with child windows (Adobe Photoshop springs to mind, as well as browser tabs within a browser window) don’t do it…
Thank you for this feedback. It means a lot and is providing me with the motivation I need to push forward with this concept
@loopernow I hope you still like it even though this one isn’t demonstrating markdown. Instead it is demonstrating the existing plain text editor we have now but what it could look like full sized.
That said, we will still add a markdown editor to our roadmap if people want it
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Still looks cool.
Thanks everyone for their feedback. After weeks of tinkering we’ve pretty much settled with this design for the writer mode (although we’ll probably do a full screen mode).
Quick question though…
It’s monday. You’ve woken up with a hangover. You’ve decided to switch to Rich Text because you’ve forgotten how to use markdown. You have a FULL day of writing ahead. What do you do?!?!?
Do you choose;
A) Fredoka light, its pretty and somewhat kinda new
B) Fredoka regular, its still pretty but i like my type strong
C) Nitti, it’s old school, proven by the old school and does the job
That Nitti font is quite nice and more readable to me. I think I like it because the font has more room to breathe, but I like the style of Fredoka more.
Fredoka is available as a variable weight file as well. Judging from the screenshot, it looks like you went with the regular (400) and thin (300) static files. Try using 350 weight to the variable weight file (or whatever is in between), that might be your sweet spot.
Also, though I prefer the readability of Nitti, it doesn’t mean you can’t adjust the kerning and line spacing on the Fredoka font to make it feel less crowded. I tend to add a bit of sub-pixel kerning to many seemingly good fonts for better readability. Though, I think a full 1px might be the winner.
Food for thought.
Excellent feedback! Thank you
Actually, straight after I hit send I looked up at my screenshot, and could read the Nitti text in a glance. I think the ultimate solution is to offer a handful of nice options like Nitti and Fredoka for writers to choose from.
I’m not sure if you plan to support a choice between dark and light themes. But if so, letters in a dark theme should generally be a bit thinner than in a light theme. Or consider it vice versa, the light theme font should have a tad more font-weight.
Reason is, the light part of the page “eats” a little into the dark part. So with a light theme, the letters get eroded from the surrounding brightness, while on a dark theme, the letters bleed into the dark surroundings.
For the font choice, I kinda like them both, really hard to tell. Offering it as an option is a good idea, I think.
